Practicing Against Bots Isn't Always The Best Practice and Here's Why.

[ansossy]

Firstly anything level 7 or higher in terms of difficulty (which is the only real way to practice a lot of priorities) will result in constant airdodging. The AI hasn't gotten better in the Smash Series. They've gotten generic. You Rest they AirDodge. You Attack they dodge. You try to charge a smash attack they grab. They act as if they are looking at your controller all the time which is unfair in various ways. Next their patterns are ridiculously stupid. Fox will always up-b Under the ledge any moment he can if not he'll jump then up-b or even do it if the ledge is right in front of him leaving him open to easy spikes or back airs. Bots also suck against jumpy characters like Jigglypuff in which they act like you are about to land on the ground in which they have no idea how to respond and instead just try to charge a smash attack leaving themselves awfully vulnerable. Sometimes they'll even roll onto the stage right into a Falcon Punch despite knowing it's going to happen. They don't play offensively and instead wait for you to attack since they have a reaction based AI which is entirely dependent on what you are going to do. Rarely if ever do AI ever try to make convincing offensives. If you just stand there they'll move left and right and duck constantly having no idea what to do for the next 5 seconds. If you attempt rest on them for example they'll air dodge it then just not punish you despite being on the highest difficulty. Overall AI is generic and doesn't yield better training, only combo training really. Practice on Online or Friends or Amiibo they yield better training.

 

[ぱみゅ]

You shouldn't look for practice only CPU, or only FG, or only Amiibos, though only Offline friendlies might be helpful....

Point being, mix up the training and know what you are looking for:
Bots help you with speed and spacing, and taking decisions under pressure.
FG helps you figure out habits. Both yours and your opponent's.
Offline friendlies help with all of the above, plus having an environment with real-time inputs and a thinking opponent that (hopefully) kbow what he/she is doing makes it for a VERY different game.
I'm not sure what does an Amiibo help with though.

 

[ansossy]

You shouldn't look for practice only CPU, or only FG, or only Amiibos, though only Offline friendlies might be helpful....

Point being, mix up the training and know what you are looking for:
Bots help you with speed and spacing, and taking decisions under pressure.
FG helps you figure out habits. Both yours and your opponent's.
Offline friendlies help with all of the above, plus having an environment with real-time inputs and a thinking opponent that (hopefully) kbow what he/she is doing makes it for a VERY different game.
I'm not sure what does an Amiibo help with though.

I definitely agree. I always try to find ways to practice, but getting friends and all that stuff is very difficult since a lot of people these days are too into other games like Call of Duty especially in states where the majority of the population is uneducated rednecks. Amiibo's are like CPU, but they have different patterns which allow for more extensive practicing, but they don't occasionally do cheesy ****, unless you specifically play like that when you verse your amiibo.

 

[Octagon]

I'm not sure what does an Amiibo help with though.

A level 50 amiibo helps with facing an opponent that starts out better than you stat wise. You'll never be put into this scenario in a tournament setting so i tend to stay away from amiibo training. Cpu, FG, and Offline Friendlies is the way to go tho for training

 

[Ludiloco]

Amiibos are even worse than CPUs imo. Their perfect shielding and punish game is just ridiculous, and you will only learn to punish your own habits. If you don't do anything, neither will your amiibo. If you run away, they follow you and just stare you down. They are rarely aggressive, just wait for you to attack and then get frame perfect shields and punishes. It's not healthy to expect this from a human opponent, though there is some value in being punished for things level 9 CPUs won't catch.

 

[Atrabilious]

Putting aside all the split-second reaction time nonsense, playing against AI for the intention of improving your game against human players is a generally bad idea purely on the basis that it will make you develop bad habits in your gameplay if you rely on it a lot.

AI isn't particularly intelligent. While amiibo do sort of learn in a manner of speaking ( link ) generally speaking an AI will not learn to overcome you. If you find something that the AI doesn't seem to capable of responding to you can simply loop them with that same situation over and over again for success. They won't figure out how to get around what you're doing, so you'll keep doing it regardless of how poor an option it may be.

For the sake of example, let's say this particular move they don't know how to respond to is Ike's f-smash. Aspiring player 'Squitters' tries to improve his game by beating on the AI, and realises that Ike's f-smash is the bee's knees for mollywhoppin' those AI lemmings. This cultivates a playstyle where Squitters just throws out unsafe f-smashes because he's used to the AI just eating them over and over again and piling up the victories because of it. Squitters decides he's ready to start playing against human opponents and brings his f-smash A-game with him. This usually goes one of two ways, either Squitters plays against someone exceptionally bad and wins with his f-smash beat downs and keeps doing it. Or more likely, Squitters runs into someone half competent and gets curbstomped, because you don't just throw out YOLO f-smashes with Ike every few moments and expect to get away with it, you get spaced-out and punished on your ending lag. And even if you do manage to land a couple of f-smashes, the other guy is going to start making those reads after he learns you're all about the f-smash. Either way Squitters is worse off for his efforts aginst AI. AI is good for learning the very basics of a game, but after that you need something that is actually capable of learning to fight you.

I'd be inclined to say this is largely true for most if not all fighting games. Fighting game AI swings wildly between the post of being painfully incompetent all the way up to opposite post of being an un-repentant, input reading, cheating toe-rag with in human reaction times. Stick to fighting human players, there's no substitute for fighting an actually intelligent opponent. Preferably offline, it's hard to learn how to play a game effectively when lag can make you think certain things do/don't work, when in an offline setting they would/wouldn't.

For Glory works for finding intelligent players if offline is simply not an option. I know the intelligent part is dubious in regards to FG, but it can happen.

 

[Kerpy Derp]

Okay so what do I do I have no Wii u for amiibos I rek the face out of my brother and my internet is limited so I can't get online and don't have time for offline friendly I have to resort to my CPUs tho they are incredibly easy hey are helpful....sometimes

 

[Pyr]

CPUs are good for a few things. Nothing beats offline play against people, but CPUs help the following:

• Learning the basics of a character.
• Learning the ranges and options of a character
• Learning what's unsafe on block (lower cpu levels)
• Learning basic combo strings/true combos. CPUs DO DI, and attempt to DI away from basic combos. See Up-Throw > Down-B with Pikachu at 60-100% depending on the opponent.
• Learning other characters' basic threat zones.

If your focus is to improve these specific areas, CPUs aren't half bad for practice. Mixups, advanced matchups, advanced DI, and other things they just can't do should not be a focus point. Also, never go against levels 7-9 unless you're testing true combos or strings. Your goal isn't to win. It's to improve.

 

[LunarWingCloud]

CPUs are only good for getting your feet wet with a character you have no knowledge of using since they give a better chance to test out fresh playstyles. But immediately after they become insufficient in bettering your character. Always have and always will.

 

[OmegaSorin]

Iunno about that, when playing against my Amiibo (Marth to be precise) i've been capable of bettering my game immensely with Marth and Luci. I've not really had much luck getting anything out of the CPU's but... Amiibo has been really helpful at least to me.